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Hello, everyone. My name is Ben Shippee, and I'm the Tech Director for Brew Gentlemen. I'd like to start by letting you know that unfortunately, there is no free beer at this talk.
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By show of hands, how many of you are from Pittsburgh?
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Great! It's mostly the southern crowd. I'm sure you're aware that Brew Gentlemen is a craft brewery located in Braddock, Pennsylvania. In this talk, I'll focus on how we've leveraged technology at the brewery and our journey over the past three and a half years with various technical projects.
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Some of these projects include our menu board, our hackathons, and various exciting innovations that have come to life within the brewery.
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Brew Gentlemen was founded by a couple of graduates, opening its doors in 2014. Since then, Pittsburgh has seen a craft beer explosion, with close to 40 different breweries either in the city or just outside of it.
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What makes Brew Gentlemen stand out? Primarily, it’s the beer. Our brewers create a balanced and elegant range of beers, which contribute to a meaningful experience while helping to revitalize the historic steel town of Braddock.
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Our beers have consistently received high ratings, and I can share a noteworthy quote from a publication stating that ours is "the best and most complex double IPA I had the chance to taste, ranking at the impressive number 176 nationwide." This reflects the exceptional work done by our brewmaster, brewing staff, and co-founders.
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Now, let me explain what the brewery looks like. Essentially, it’s a typical brew house: you have grains, hops, and water going in, and beer coming out. By show of hands, how many of you have been on a brewery tour before?
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That should come as no surprise! We have some barrels for barrel-aged beer, and the basic principle remains: we brew, it goes in the barrel, and it sits for a while.
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Most brewery tours discuss fermentation vessels, brewing tanks, and cleaning equipment, which are largely standard across facilities. While processes might change slightly, the core fundamentals remain the same.
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However, that’s not what we’ll be focusing on today, as automation at this level is costly, dangerous, and best left to professionals, which I am not.
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Today, I want to dive into the business side of the brewery. Without the back office, we may have a lot of beer, but we wouldn’t be able to do anything with it.
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This brings us to the second reason why Brew Gentlemen stands out: our core values. A lot of our philosophy derives from Japanese concepts such as Miyabi and Kaizen. The principle that resonates with me the most is Kaizen, which focuses on continual improvement and constantly asking ourselves what we can do to enhance our processes.
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Now, let's talk about the taproom. In this photo, you can see our digital menu board. When Brew Gentlemen opened, many breweries were still using chalkboards for menus, which led to some interesting discussions.
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This is an earlier image of the digital menu board, which was driven by a surprisingly simple process. Initially, they exported an Illustrator file into an image format, loaded it onto an iPod, and connected it to the TV. Sounds quite crude, right? But it works!
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This method embodied the do-it-yourself spirit of the brewery. However, prior to launching our menu offerings, we relied on our own system since there were no digital solutions.
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Our taps could change often—kegs could kick, new kegs might be added, and images would need to be updated on the iPod-driven menu. This led to a significant bottleneck, making it frustrating for customers to order beer only to discover it was unavailable.
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To remedy this, I decided to implement Rails, which not only enabled real-time updates but also integrated with our website, streamlining this process and minimizing bottlenecks.
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Thanks to this change, any bar staff member can easily update the beer list, ensuring that it is consistently accurate until they place an order. Rails is a modular framework, so we took advantage of various engines and gems to piece everything together.
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One of the components was an active admin dashboard. This dashboard provides a quick overview of available beers and those on tap, allowing staff to reorder beers within seconds.
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Each beer has its icon, name, style, and an option to mark it as kicked. This process can be done quickly by any member of the bar staff, eliminating the need for specialized software.
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Additionally, we now maintain a beer database—a persistent record of all the beers brewed, including pricing, which allows our brewmaster to easily input all necessary details such as ABV, tasting notes, name, and style.
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The icon creation responsibility has also been distributed among creative team members, reducing bottlenecks and streamlining our internal processes.
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Initially, we used a Chromecast for our digital board. As a proof of concept, it worked, but we were wary of investment in further hardware while we were still in our early days.
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Eventually, we upgraded to Raspberry Pi displays, which pull data from our API. Now, we have a fully functional digital menu board and could generate printed menus as needed, ensuring consistency across printed and digital formats.
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We now have a Rails app equipped with a menu, a beer database, and printable tags. The next step was integrating our website, initially using an iframe, which soon transitioned to a content management system to expand editing options.
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To avoid paying for WordPress methods to transition, we utilized WordPress’s RSS feed to scrape and repurpose data into our new blog model within the CMS without extra costs, allowing quick integration.
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Users can explore and sort different beers by seasonal availability or flagship varieties, also accessing detailed tasting notes and pairing options for each beer, along with links to Untappd and Beer Advocate.
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About a year after I began working at Brew Gentlemen, we organized our first hackathon. How many of you are familiar with the Balmer Peak concept?
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In a brewery setting, it felt like a natural fit—24 hours filled with beer, coding, and the necessary power tools made for a successful night!
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During this event, we developed a Raspberry Pi-powered display for our bathrooms to update our event details, including beer releases and food truck schedules.
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We also experimented with Philips Hue lights, which had their benefits but proved challenging for syncing multiple user profiles. In response, we created a custom active admin view that has served us well.
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This controlled the lights depending on audio input, which worked well for a while. Ultimately, we decided to forgo this feature to keep our focus on brewing.
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Let’s revisit the taproom; we discussed the digital menu board and explored the Clover Point-of-Sale system. We reviewed the potential for integrating Clover with our digital menu.
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Unfortunately, their API didn’t provide great access, though we knew how much was left in kegs relative to sales, allowing for some predictive analytics.
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On the right, we have tags for the growler-to-go packaging, denoting various bottle formats. It was inefficient for creative staff to constantly update these materials manually.
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By using the Pronto PDF gem, we automated the label printing process. Now the bar staff can quickly generate tags for anything on tap without needing creative oversight.
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Now, let’s take a step back and recap the features available in our Rails application so far. We maintain a comprehensive beer database, management menu screens, and various display management options.
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Originally, lighting management was challenging, and we simplified that aspect for ease of use without an entire redundant system.
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The website and CMS solution underwent various updates as we wanted our brewery staff to confidently manage their own site without heavy reliance on technical infrastructure.
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Eventually, we transitioned from this to a simpler hosted solution, Wix, for non-technical managers to edit menus and schedules without needing deep involvement with backend complexity.
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At this stage, we employ Behavior Driven Development principles to simplify ongoing tasks, ensuring our internal systems remain flexible and user-friendly.
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As we continue evolving our tech stack, we migrated from Rails backend server rendering to Angular views, eventually settling on React for its enhanced usability and maintainability.
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This shift allowed us to develop a more intuitive user interface for brewery staff, maintaining core business logic while streamlining service flow.
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Our current dashboard differentiates between customer-facing details and internal staff information—such as knowing when a keg can be swapped if kicked.
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It's simple to add or edit beers directly on the dashboard, ensuring everything updates dynamically with no burdensome workflows.
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Simultaneously, we’ve emphasized documenting tap information clearly for external analysis, ensuring pricing updates reflect correctly in real time and accurately.
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With our redesigned menu board, we’ve focused on minimizing display white space, organizing beers into distinct categories of flagship, seasonals, and special offerings.
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This process began to illustrate the manner in which we can test digital interfaces within the brewery, gathering feedback from customers on their experience.
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Through this iterative process, we found that switching our menu to a vertical format gained favorable responses, improving visibility and usability in a busy taproom environment.
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Following that, we also addressed bottle offerings within the brewery—distinguishing between standard bottles people can simply pick up and limited releases which require reservations.
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We implemented a reservation system that allows customers to sign up for bottle releases quickly, controlling how quickly inventory moves and managing customer expectations.
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To maximize operational efficiency, we facilitate these bottle pickups through scheduled slots on select days, thus eliminating long lines and congestion at the brewery.
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This seamless digital experience also serves as an excellent marketing tool while ensuring clear communication about availability and reservation procedures.
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Now, as we build towards this model, we prioritize extending our existing solutions to future scalability—by maintaining consistent branding and layout within our apps.
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Our approach throughout this journey emphasizes readiness for any adjustments without deviating from our core operation vision and ecosystem.
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In terms of partnerships, we built a strong network of food truck vendors, rotating weekly to align perfectly with our seasonal beer offerings and promotions.
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Creating the weekly food truck schedule was cumbersome, requiring digital forms that automatically output to various formats, allowing us straightforward publication to social channels.
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This systematic approach of tracking and sharing information saves team hours and better engages our audience through consistency across platforms.
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With a clearly defined reservation system and workflow centered around customer experience, we’ve mitigated booking difficulties that often arise with popular food trucks.
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Finally, to streamline event coordination at the annex, we established a reservation form on our website, now equipped with integrated payment processing capabilities.
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Previously, managing these requests through various platforms proved uncooperative; the new form reduces discrepancies and errors in communication.
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To improve reservation tracking, we are migrating to a streamlined management system, implementing a robust internal vehicle based on React for easy access.
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Projects now include generating automated contracts for each reservation, thus relieving management of time-consuming administrative tasks that can easily be coded.
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These innovations reflect our commitment to operational efficiency while enriching the overall experience for our clients in our brewery space.
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Most recently, we held another hackathon focused on enhancing physical and operational aspects within our brewery, combining fun with fundamental improvements.
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Our cold storage was one such project that benefited from our DIY roots, allowing us to create efficient inventory tracking and automated keg information management.
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By implementing labels and QR codes on our kegs, we now track beer efficiently—going beyond static paper processes and improving overall management.
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These modernized solutions have allowed us to adapt to varied beer offerings and remain flexible whether for merchandise or greater inventory tracking.
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Overall, we consistently strive for balance in all we do—promoting operating efficiencies while supporting our core mission: brewing great beer!
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Our team continuously challenges the sense of what's possible, utilizing data-driven analysis and collaborative ideas to drive us forward creatively.
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Today, I’d like to conclude by mentioning our recent release titled ‘Now or Never’—a testament to our innovative, DIY spirit that characterizes Brew Gentlemen.
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And with that, I’d like to open the floor for questions.
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Thank you for being here!
